Rotate 3D Charts in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Learn how to rotate 3D charts in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Author:Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: February 12, 2013Last Updated: February 12, 2013

When your 3D chart comprises columns of various heights, chances are that some of the columns hide other columns placed behind them, as shown in
Figure 1. This is especially true with 3D charts that have a
Z axis.

Figure 1: One of the Series 3 columns is completely hidden

One of the ways to make the columns placed behind visible is to
make the taller columns transparent. The other
way to solve this issue is to rotate the 3D chart so that you end up with a view in which the shorter columns become clearly visible. Follow these
steps to explore more:

Select the Chart Area -- right-click (or Ctrl+click) to bring up the context menu you see in
Figure 2. From this context menu, choose the 3-D Rotation option.

Figure 2: 3-D Rotation option selected

Note: For this tutorial, we have selected the Chart Area to bring up the contextual menu. You can similarly select
any chart element and right-click (or Ctrl+click) to bring up a similar contextual menu. Note that if you select the edge of the
entire chart, and right-click -- you may not see the 3-D Rotation option.

This brings up the Format Chart Area dialog box that you see in Figure 3. Make sure that the
3-D Rotation option is selected within the sidebar. Within the Rotation area, you can see X,
Y and Perspective options (marked as A, B and C within
Figure 3).

Figure 3: 3D Rotation options within Format Chart Area dialog box

Note: Did you find it strange that the Z Axis rotation options were grayed out in Figure 3, above?
That's because you can't rotate the chart on the Z (depth) axis -- if PowerPoint allowed Z Axis rotation, your chart columns would not stand straight
and would start leaning! That's the reason why charts can be rotated on the X (horizontal) and and Y (vertical)
axes but never on the Z (depth) axis.

Let us explore chart rotation options as marked in Figure 3:

A. X

Specify the number of degrees to which you want to rotate the chart on X axis. Figure 4 shows the X axis
rotation value changed to 15 degrees (highlighted in red). You can directly type in the required value (number of
degrees) in the box, or increase or decrease the value using the button next to the box (highlighted in blue within
Figure 4).

Figure 4: X axis rotation changed to 15 degrees

This rotates the chart around X axis to the specified number of degrees -- Figure 5 shows our sample chart with X axis rotation
decreased from 20 to 15 degrees. Also note that the green column that was hidden earlier (refer to Figure 1, above) is visible now --
you now see all the 4 green columns rather than the 3 visible in Figure 1.

B. Y

This option is used to adjust the Y axis rotation of the chart. Here, specify the number of degrees to which you want to rotate the chart
on Y axis. As mentioned earlier, you can directly type in the required value (number of degrees) in the box (highlighted in
red within Figure 6), or increase or decrease the value using the button next to the box (highlighted
in blue within Figure 6). In Figure 6 you can see that we have increased the Y axis
rotation value from 15 degrees to 25 degrees.

Figure 6: Y axis rotation changed to 25 degrees

This rotates the chart around Y axis to the specified number of degrees -- Figure 7 shows our sample chart with Y axis rotation
increased form 15 degrees to 25 degrees, also note that the column that was hidden earlier (refer to Figure 1, above) is partially
visible now.

Note: Rotating the chart on Y axis may result in your chart appearing as viewed from a horizontal base level, the sky, or even
below the base level. Play with different rotation values to come up with a Y axis rotation value that works best for your chart.

C. Perspective

To change the depth of view of the chart, type the degree of perspective that you want within the
Perspective box (highlighted in red within Figure 8, below), or use the view buttons
(highlighted in blue within Figure 8, below) until you have reached the result that you want.

By applying all three of the rotation options together, you can get better results. Look at Figure 8 where we have changed all of
the X, Y and Perspective values.

Figure 8: X, Y, and Perspective values changed

Once you have set the rotation values as required, click the OK button within the Format Chart Area dialog box.
Look at Figure 9 where you can see our sample 3D Column chart has been rotated to show the hidden column.

Figure 9: Changing X, Y, and Perspective values has made all columns visible
Compare the charts in Figures 1, 5, 7, and 9. You can see that in
Figure 9 you can see all of the columns clearly.

Feature List 01 (Layout with Tabs)

The Feature List Layout comprises three sample PowerPoint presentations: one each to create a visual list for 4 features, 5 features, and 6 features.
These work great when you have too much information to fit within one slide. This solution lets you use multiple slides, but the visual result is
still that of one single slide!